Langel knew two things: first, the war was not done (for the sun was still there); second, his tongue was in his mouth (he could feel it).

That couldn’t be right.

He had lost both of those things nearly a year ago.

Yet, it was merely a morbid flashback; it meant he was dying. His body was merely conjuring kind memories to allow him to starve to death in peace.

But for now, the sun warmed his paled skin and wind lazily danced around him.

The paladin’s eyes blazed as the sun sank below, his fingers digging into the damp earth. The grass slipped against his fingers but he only grabbed it harder. He was sitting on a mound of softened ground and little blue flowers—the flowers were the first to die when the sky went dark. It had been two years since he had seen the sun. Langel had missed it at first, but now it just burned his eyes.

To think that the world was unaware that this was the last sunset for, well, a very long, unpleasant while. He gave a humorless chuckle. The dark wasn’t all that bad for the first few months—Saints, it finally shut up those roosters that hollered him awake every morning.

And to think that his tongue was in his mouth. Like, entirely within his mouth—not in some jar or in some mangey king’s infinite storage room, but literally inside of him.

A couple years back, or, well, into the future, some SaintBringers had cleaved, cut, chopped his tongue right out, right at the base.

“The Saints demand silence,” they had voiced to him.

He had vomited blood for days and yet the Saints did not return the Sun. They’re finicky, those Saints.

He clicked his tongue; a resonating sound came out to grace the hill that he sat upon. How quaint.

The Saints took it to teach the world a lesson.

He clicked it again.

“That’ll teach you,” they had bellowed.

The sun sizzled in the distance; he clicked his tongue.

“That’ll teach you not to mess with immortal affairs.”

And just like that, they carried the sun away.

The plants went first. Crops withered away with unrest and without hope. The animals went next, one by one, environments suffocated and choked until they became graveyards, and then a mere memory.

The last thing he remembered was growing weary, his stomach clawing wildly for some sort of matter to sate its desire.

His food storage had run out weeks ago. Now he survived off water and water alone. The earth was rotting without the sun. Or, would rot without the sun. It seemed he was in his past—maybe he should go warn the nearby town, ramble to them like a madman.

He must’ve passed early today, surrounded by blankets of death and despair, starved to death like millions of others.

So this is what is at the end.

A memory of the last good day. A memory of the last thing worth remembering.

The sun sank.